


I'm Afraid, Afraid I've Already Lost You

by Iamthesmileyface



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hospitals, No Dialogue, Outsider's Perspective, Parental Love, Post-Cave, Trans Arthur, Trans Character, Trans Character by a Trans Author, blink and you'll miss it ot3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 23:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamthesmileyface/pseuds/Iamthesmileyface
Summary: In the wake of what was clearly a horrible accident, Carolina Pepper sits at a hospital bedside and ruminates on the past.





	I'm Afraid, Afraid I've Already Lost You

**Author's Note:**

> Mrs. Pepper - Carolina (the Carolina Reaper pepper holds the Guinness World Record for spiciest pepper)  
> Mr. Pepper - Melrose (the Melrose pepper has a Scoville rating of 0, and is known for its sweetness)

Carolina Pepper liked to consider herself a realist. Her husband was the optimist of their household, though Paprika, with her ironclad belief that everything would always go perfect (because nothing had gone wrong for her before, in her five tender years), was slowly surpassing him. But sitting ramrod straight in an uncomfortable hospital chair, staring at a paler-than-usual face under a shock of yellow hair, blinding white bandages peeking out from the shoulder of a hospital gown, she was starting to wish she was as much of an optimist as Melrose. She was wishing for a lot of things: to know where Lewis was, to be home, for Arthur to sit up from the hospital bed and grin at her sheepishly like he always had when she caught him and Lewis in childhood and childish pranks, to wake up in her own bed and this all to have been a horrible nightmare, to know at the very least if Lewis was safe, to be able to forget, no, to  _ understand _ the blank look in Vivi’s eyes when Carolina had asked where her son was and gotten back a “...Who?”

  
  


Lewis had been their miracle boy, found asleep on the doorstep (though no storks were anywhere to be seen, and the bruises, cuts, and scrapes littering the boy’s skin hinted at a far worse story). He spent his childhood with them bringing some stray or other home with him, from kittens to ducklings to dogs and once, memorably, a scorpion. When Melrose finally asked about it, not long after the scorpion incident, Lewis said he wanted the strays to have the same chance he did at a home. Most of them ended up at the local animal shelter anyway. But the biggest stray he had ever brought home, and one of the only ones they’d kept, was Arthur.

 

In third grade, Lewis, with only two years of being their son under his belt and still so small and pudgy, had quite literally dragged the boy into her house after school, and Carolina hadn’t really known what to think. He was skinny, all knees and elbows, taller than Lewis but hunched into himself like he was trying to disappear. Lewis was scraped up, his favorite pink skirt muddy, but his smile was blinding. The boy behind him, who was introduced by a name Carolina was trying her best to forget entirely, was equally dirty, and his hand and cheek were starting to bruise. Melrose had been the one who really reacted while Carolina considered, fussing over them with wet washcloths, antiseptic ointment, and bandaids emblazoned with brightly colored cartoon characters. Lewis chattered away, rambling about how  _ cool _ his new friend was, how after school, some older boys had taken offense to Lewis’s skirt and had been picking on him but his friend had punched them and scared them off. The other boy was hunched over at the kitchen table, shrinking away from her scrutiny and Melrose’s gentle hands in equal measure. She was the one to gently stop Lewis before the strange boy could get even more tense, a hand on his shoulder and the offer of some brownies for him and his new friend distracting both of them sufficiently.

 

When she had thanked Arthur (though he wouldn’t go by Arthur for another handful of years) for standing up for her son, he’d refused to meet her eyes and scuffed his foot along the ground, mumbling that he couldn’t just let the bullies do that, and that they didn’t have to do any of this for him. Carolina had told him that he earned it and driven him to his uncle’s house after his parents hadn’t picked up the phone.

 

The two boys had been fast and best friends since that day, Arthur walking back with Lewis most days, setting up their backpacks and homework in a booth at the restaurant. Slowly, she and Mel watched Arthur come out of his shell, grins getting more and more frequent and his confidence when walking in had grown almost enough to rival Lewis’s own, but he still flinched if someone yelled or anything broke. When the boys were in fifth grade, Arthur’s uncle had sat down with Melrose and a heavily pregnant Carolina to explain that Arthur’s parents were, for lack of a better term, shit. As far as Lance knew, they’d never laid a hand on Arthur, but they fought pretty much constantly, and his mother had a bad habit of throwing things at the wall when she was angry. Lance was blunt about it, which she greatly appreciated, and asked them if they minded Arthur hanging around the restaurant. His auto shop wasn’t always the safest place for a kid, and he couldn’t always keep an eye on the kid. Though it took some of the weight off of Carolina’s shoulders, knowing that Arthur wasn’t being physically hurt at home, she did have to close her eyes and take a few deep breaths, Melrose putting a gentle hand on her forearm. 

 

Looking back on it, that was the day she decided that she already had two kids, with a third on the way.

 

Arthur came out to them on a sunny summer’s day when he was twelve, the summer between elementary and middle school. Lewis had been acting strange and secretive (as secretive as he could, the boy had always been an open book) for the last few weeks, but had refused to tell them anything. Lance had driven Arthur over, and when Carolina had seen him walk in she’d been hit with a wave of déjà vu. The way he hunched in on himself, the nervous darting of his eyes…all that distinguished him from the eight year old he’d been was the lack of bruises and the absence of an excitable eight year old Lewis. He looked like he was about to have a panic attack, and not even Lance’s rough pat on the back or Lewis’s worried hovering nearby seemed to help. They didn’t make it past the entryway before Arthur took a deep, shuddering breath and began to speak. He stuttered and stumbled his way through telling them that he was a boy, and asking them to call him Arthur. When he finished, he refused to look at them, cringing away and wrapping his arms around himself, and it broke Carolina’s heart. What broke her heart even more was the way he froze when she and her husband hugged him, then began to sob, burying his face against her shoulder as Melrose began a steady stream of reassurances. Lewis joined in immediately, bracketing Arthur in affection as he tried to hold back his tears. Lance, still standing at the door, cleared his throat and said “See, Artie? Told ya they’d be fine with it.” He left shortly after that, telling them to call him if anything came up and when Arthur needed a ride home. He’d never been comfortable with overly emotional scenes, and this was nothing if not overly emotional. Of course, the hug only lasted a few minutes more before little Bell came toddling in, demanding to be included in the affection and to know why Arthur was crying.

 

A few weeks after that, Lance had called to let them know that Arthur was staying with him now, and Carolina didn’t press it.

 

Middle school had brought Vivi Yukino into their lives, a chaotic whirlwind of blue that swept both boys up in her wake. Melrose worried about her influence, but Carolina watched how her boys fell into step beside her and smiled. She was the clear leader of their little trio, and Lewis began coming home with stories of little adventures they’d had in the outskirts of town and cryptids Vivi had apparently sworn to find one day. Vivi drew Lewis out of his routines, Arthur further out of his shell, and both of them into her orbit. 

 

In high school, Carolina had watched the three of them grow closer and closer, watched Vivi flirt with Lewis until her son was beet-red and hiding his face in his hands, listened to Lewis talk about Vivi and Arthur like they were the most important people in the universe, watched Arthur look at the other two like they’d hung the moon and stars. The only thing that had surprised her when Lewis admitted that he and Vivi were dating (he’d tried to hide it for about a week, though he’d never gotten any better at lying) was that Arthur wasn’t involved.

 

It wasn’t hard to connect the old stories of cryptid hunts and adventures to what had happened after high school, the three of them setting out in Arthur’s beat up old van to hunt ghosts. They’d come back every few months, with stories of ghosts and monsters and, once or twice,  _ cults _ . She and Melrose dismissed most of the stories as superstitious nonsense, as them seeing what they wanted to see, but a few of them had given her a chill.

  
  


A rapid crescendo in the beeping of the heart monitor startled Carolina out of her reverie, and she watched, her heart in her throat, as Arthur came alive before her. A scream tore out of him, and he dissolved into distraught weeping. He was choking on his own sobs, words drowning between them, and she could barely make out a handful before a nurse rushed in, pushing her away from the hospital bed as she sedated him.

 

Carolina was left staring at Arthur’s bed once more, tears shining on his slack cheeks and beginning to burn her own. She tried desperately to make sense of what he’d said, the only words she’d managed to catch being “sorry,” “fault,” “pushed,” and “Lewis!” Her blood froze in her veins. Had Arthur --?

 

No. She shook her head firmly. No, that couldn’t be it. She knew her boys well enough to know that Arthur would never even think of…anything like what her over-tired, over-stressed mind was suggesting.

**Author's Note:**

> This came about bc out of the blue I just started thinking about how the Peppers might feel about Lewis's friends, and how Lewis and Arthur were clearly very close before the whole possession thing. It also follows a headcanon that I've seen here and there, that Mystery was responsible for Arthur's memory loss vis a vis the cave incident.
> 
> I might add some scenes later, just like little bits that either didn't make the cut or would be nice as a scene.


End file.
